FILE - In this Feb. 24, 2015, file photo, Ellen Pao, center, with her attorney, Therese Lawless, left, leaves the Civic Center Courthouse during a lunch break in her trial in San Francisco. Reddit said Friday, July 10, 2015, that interim CEO Pao resigned from the company, and co-founder Steve Huffman is back as its CEO. Eric RisbergAP

FILE - In this Feb. 24, 2015, file photo, Ellen Pao, center, with her attorney, Therese Lawless, left, leaves the Civic Center Courthouse during a lunch break in her trial in San Francisco. Reddit said Friday, July 10, 2015, that interim CEO Pao resigned from the company, and co-founder Steve Huffman is back as its CEO. Eric RisbergAP

Shawn Hubler: Ask Reddit anything but how to fix hate

With Silicon Valley’s favorite whipping girl, Ellen Pao, driven from the top job at Reddit, the folks at the website’s “Chairman Pao” subreddit forum haven’t seemed to know what to do this week with their glorious victory.

“What will come of this sub now that Pao is out?” someone named StAnkyBeer fretted.

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But the joy felt forced. “Not sure this is a victory for anyone,” a commenter named mrcodewizard posted. “What do we do now?” another wondered.

Apparently the thrill of hounding a woman out of an executive suite is fleeting. Especially when maybe larger issues are at stake.

I don’t know whether running one of the nation’s most popular websites is Ellen Pao’s strong suit, and I thought her failed gender discrimination lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins made everyone involved, including her, look bad.

Launched 10 years ago by a couple of guys in their 20s, Reddit is now a collection of about 9,000 communities run by about 20,000 volunteers and about 70 paid employees, more and more of whom seem to be quitting. Its founders are still in the picture and, I’m sorry, but the phrase “mature beyond their years” doesn’t seem to describe them.

But Reddit’s demographics limit its obvious business plan, which is ad sales. A 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center found that only about 6 percent of online adults are Reddit users, and the biggest chunk of them are guys under 30.

So it’s adolescent. And its fringes use free speech to rationalize a venomous mean streak.

One racist subreddit is nothing but videos of black men being beaten bloody by white men. Another, filled with misogyny, is entitled “Slut Justice.” Others – more than you’d expect – disparage Muslims, Jews, homosexuals, feminism, social justice.

How you attract advertisers with that kind of garbage under your masthead, I couldn’t tell you. Apparently Pao couldn’t figure it out either.

But when she tried to ban a handful of the worst subreddits – in which overweight people were photographed and then shamed under the title Fat People Hate, for instance – she incurred the wrath of the site’s free speech purists.

And then when one of the founders eventually fired a popular employee who ran interference for the site’s volunteer workforce, the mob blamed her. Only belatedly did a former Reddit executive go onto the site this week to say that the firing wasn’t Pao’s fault.

About This Blog

Shawn Hubler has been a reporter and columnist in California for more than three decades. Before joining The Sacramento Bee, she spent 18 years covering local, state and national issues at the Los Angeles Times. Born in Pennsylvania, she has a B.A. in journalism from Penn State. Contact Shawn Hubler at shubler@sacbee.com or 916-321-1907. Twitter: @ShawnHubler.